Those of us who have been employed by any sort of corpration with a large enough budget to throw at Diversity Training have sat through a session on how words harm as much as do sticks and stones. I’m not opposed to the concept of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. I agree that historically there have been many cultural minorities whose opportunities to succeed have been restricted by attitudes in the workplace. It’s not just a white men v. everyone else thing, but here in the US and A it’s been blatant for a couple of centuries that we’ve favored our own and grudgingly accepted women into the office with non-administrative roles. We’ve only grudgingly opened up to black and brown people as managers and leaders.
It’s important to recognize that limiting the leadership to a specific demographic leads to a limitation of thought within a company. A broad, diverse array of thinkers from multiple backgrounds brings in ideas based on experiences. This aids problem-solving, and it aids identification of products and services that customers outside of a narrow scope based on race and sex will be unaware of. It’s important for growth. It’s very much like genetics. A diverse gene pool strengthens the population and helps introduce new traits, while lessing the damage of dangerous recessive gene 1combinations and expressions.
So, yes, diversity is in general a good thing.
But we need to think about how it is approached and question those who are selling their programs. Like any charlatan who sells a cure, there are people who put together programs out of their ass with no science nor research behind them to support their concepts. It’s getting so that employees are bewildered about the messages that their bosses are sending when they schedule a diversity training that is half-cocked and contains concepts that are more controlling of employees’ thoughts than about diversity of thought. When concepts such as pronoun use are being mandated, when microaggressions are enumerated based on claims rather than evidence, the workplace turns into a minefield and is no longer quite so welcoming.
I am fortunate in that I work for a corporation that doesn’t budget for DE&I mandatory classes with using outside instructors. Our approach is to have monthly team discussions on topics following independent viewing of a video, or reading of an article. It’s not top-down by any means. And it focuses on the issues that make for a smoothly-functioning workplace, which is the purpose of gathering in a workspace. It’s to work. It’s not to solve social problems except those that affect the corporate environment of conducive corporation.
The area that I work in has an aura of mutual respect among our co-workers and that may be a reflection of the type of work that we do. I’m not ranting about where I work, but I disagree with some of the corporate policies over which I have no control. So, this is not about me, and you can take it for what it’s worth based on that.
It’s not always been this way. Up until about 8 years ago there was mandated 2 day group diversity training. For me, it was welcome because it meant two days of not taking calls in the call center. The training was rotated among different departments so that we would be able to network with various people throughout the data center where I was working at the time. The most useful thing that came out of it was that I learned where there were coffee stations away from my own in case I didn’t want to make a fresh urn late in the afternoon. But, it also contained some useful information.
In 2016 the Harvard Business Review published an article questioning the utility of Diversity Training Programs, and there are several items that interest me. One of them is a discussion of the reaction of the employees who attend the training:
… [A]bout three-quarters of firms with training still follow the dated advice of the late diversity guru R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. “If diversity management is strategic to the organization,” he used to say, diversity training must be mandatory, and management has to make it clear that “if you can’t deal with that, then we have to ask you to leave.” But five years after instituting required training for managers, companies saw no improvement in the proportion of white women, black men, and Hispanics in management, and the share of black women actually decreased by 9%, on average, while the ranks of Asian-American men and women shrank by 4% to 5%. Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance—and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.
The article was written before the widespread adoption of pronoun protocols, but it is applicable to how many people respond when told that they must refer to others by counter-intuitive pronouns based on gender identities. I observe that some people have voluntarily added pronouns to their email signatures as a way to show they are allies to trans people. I honestly don’t think that this is a good thing to do, so I don’t. But if a company mandates pronouns in email, it will certainly face a backlash.
The HBR article explains that there are several strategies that have proven, statistically, to achieve the goals of strengthening companies diverse inputs and workforce without using mandates.
I’ve observed the tendency in both of the very large corporations that I have worked for to identify a problem, propose a solution and just run with the proposed solution for as long as they see it being useful. Naturally, they move on to the next thing and keep up this cycle over and over and over. I see this happening in Diversity and Inclusion, too, but I don’t see that programs are vetted with any more research than reading the marketing tools of the Diversity Trainer. If someone calls him or herself a “Diversity Guru,” it’s natural to assume that they have studied the subject and have experience and have followed up on those companies they have provided training too. Have the providers defined a goal for the customers? Have they devised a measurement tool, and established a baseline prior to providing training, and then followed up on intervals to established that the goals have been met?
Or have they just written a book or two based on their own anecdotal experiences, and use the opportunity of diversity classes to sell more books to the managers? Have the gurus come up with mnemonics that are unique but haven’t established that they will make impacts towards the goals that the company has set?
I don’t think that there’s a lot of science behind diversity training. I think it’s a field that can be lucrative for the provider if they are entertaining an audience while scolding them to do better, but I don’t think that many of the DE&I gurus and rangers are making any lasting improvements in the environments of the workplaces that hire them. And, if all the company wants to do is check a block that they’ve done their part by holding a class, that’s probably fine.
When I was younger and in my first corporate job, I traveled around the South Central US, from Mississippi to New Mexico, and from El Paso to Topeka. Occasionally I flew, but mostly I drove. I talked to my boss one day about how much I enjoyed listening to my mix tapes while driving, and he suggested that I use the time more productively by listening to motivational speakers and lent me a book on tape to get me started. I listened to it on a drive from Oklahoma City to Amarillo, which can be a long drive through nothing if you don’t have something to listen to. The tapes were fun to listen to, but in the long run didn’t give me anything that I could use in work.
I’ve been to see motivational speakers, and I worked at another smaller company whose managers took a day to go to see Zig Ziglar and others. The next day they were back in the office and talked about all the funny things that Zig had said, things that sound good and self-confirming for management. But over the next few months, I had expected some changes in the company based on the Big Zig. And there was nothing.
I think that many of the motivational and DE&I gurus are just re-hashing the same concepts over and over again. They are passing along memes, not the Facebook type, but the cultural type of memes. We all hear them and see them and react to them. We nod knowingly when a friend refers to bacon as being delicious. But, in the end these memes are pablum because we ingest them over and over again, without figuring out how to incorporate them into our lives.
Another company I worked for planned a big social upheaval after one of the owners read a book called Gung Ho. Meetings were called in each of the individual shops and we watched videos. Managers were expected to gain buy-in from all of the employees. We were supposed to greet each other saying “Gung Ho” instead of “good morning” or even “hello.” “Gung Ho, Roger!” “Gung Ho, Mike!”
After four weeks, a new program was implemented that was a direct opposite to the self-directed work teams concept. We went from being self-managed to being micro-managed on a dime. And the new program didn’t last very long.
Cultures can change, but they can’t change quickly. And they can’t change unless the people see something in the change that they like and think will make their lives better and more fun. If people don’t see any reward for making an effort to change then they will resent anyone who tells them they have to.
And this is reflected in pronoun usage. I don’t see any reward for changing the way that I use pronouns. I don’t think that it is a way of respecting someone else, in order to validate that they have an identity that varies from their sex. I see it, and most people see it, as imposing a recognition of something that isn’t real in order to show that we are willing to comply with a ridiculous command that I try to remember who wants a counter-pronoun and what it may be.
This is an example of a coercive culture that rewards only the coercers:
What is a pronoun?
A pronoun is a word that is used instead of a noun or a noun phrase to refer to individuals.
Pronouns can be in the first person singular (I, me) or plural (we, us); second person singular or plural (you); and the third person singular (e.g., she/her, he/him, they/them, ze/hir) or plural (they/them).
Gendered pronouns specifically reference someone’s gender: he/him/his or she/her/hers.
Non-gendered or nonbinary pronouns are not gender specific and are most often used by people who identify outside of a gender binary. The most common set of nonbinary pronouns is they/them/their used in the singular (e.g., Jadzia identifies as genderqueer; they do not see themselves as either a woman or a man). Other nonbinary pronouns include ze (pronounced “zee”) in place of she/he, and hir (pronounced “here”) in place of his/him/her (e.g., Jadzia runs hir own business, but ze is more well-known as an author). The terms “it” or “he-she” are slurs used against transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, and should not be used.
Other approaches to pronouns may include going simply by one’s name, not having a preference, or wanting to avoid pronouns altogether.
There are many languages in the world that do not use gendered pronouns.
Pronoun Table
(This is not an exhaustive list)
SubjectiveObjectivePossessiveReflexiveExamplesSheHerHersHerselfShe is studying.
I studied with her.
The book is hers.He HimHisHimselfHe is studying.
I studied with him.
The book is his.TheyThemTheirsThemselfThey are studying.
I studied with them.
The book is theirs.NameNameName'sName's selfAlex is studying.
I studied with Alex.
The book is Alex's.Ze ("zee")Zir
("zere")/ Hir ("here")Zirs/HirsZirself/HirselfZe is studying.
I studied with zir.
The book is zirs.Why are pronouns important?
It is important to ask for pronouns because you cannot assume how someone identifies their gender based on their appearance.
As a society, we commonly assume the gender of others by their appearance and indicate these assumptions by using gendered language, such as she/he, ma’am/sir, Ms./Mr., and ladies/gentlemen.
This practice results in many individuals, especially trans and gender-nonconforming individuals, being misgendered, which may lead them to feel disrespected, marginalized, and invisible.
It is a privilege to not have to worry about which pronoun someone is going to use for you based on how they perceive your gender. If you have this privilege, yet fail to respect someone else’s gender identity, it is disrespectful and hurtful.
This sort of thing does not create an “inclusive” workplace, and there is not going to be any buy-in. It creates an environment in which people will feel like they are in a minefield and likely avoid developing working relationships with the people who demand adherence. The person with the counter pronouns may get satisfaction from seeing that people are meeting their demands, but they also will find that they are eating lunch alone because their co-workers are afraid to make a mistake.
Learning how to respect each other for who they are is a mutual enterprise. Demanding pronoun usage does not lead to that sort of respect. The pronoun guidelines I shared above are from a college website. The students will either rebel or normalize these guidelines, and you may end up working with a co-hort that has spent four years in the environment.
It’s not going to go well for them when they want their employers to change, and use demands to do so. And all the Zig Ziglar mnemonics for success aren’t going to fix the workplace problems.
I’m retiring in 2025. It’s your problem, I’ll be doing something else. Something that I like to do.
Can I just take this section to sidetrack on dog breeding? It’s really out of hand when dogs are inbred so deeply that they have shortened lives and genetic disease that can make their lives miserable. Dogs should be able to breathe, and shortening the schnozzes to a point behind their bulging eyes is not even cute. The most desirable trait for animals is “happy.” And they are happy when they are healthy.